Walking Yoga
Exercise for the Rest of Us
By Cindy Reid

Review of walking yoga by Ila Sarley & Garrett Sarley. Photographs by Cynthia Del Conte. Paperback, 224 pages. Fireside/Simon & Schuster, 2002. $14.00

walking yoga is designed to “incorporate yoga principles into dynamic walking routines for physical health, mental peace and spiritual enrichment.” Its authors, Ila and Garrett Sarley have been studying, practicing and teaching yoga for the past twenty-seven years and are both founding members of the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. In addition, Ila Sarley is director of communications at the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies and Garrett Sarley is president of the Omega Institute. The authors successfully apply their enormous breadth of knowledge to the concept of combining the most mundane form of exercise, walking, with the discipline of yoga.

The book is written in an unpretentious, easy to follow style. They gently lead the reader through an explanation of the principles of yoga, often sharing their own and others anecdotal stories, and ease the reader into each step. One might think that walking would be so simple that instructions are unnecessary; but Sarleys present an appealing alternate to the way most of us hurry through our walks and strolls. They address the stumbling blocks many face when committing to a health regime, such as difficulty getting started and sustaining something new in our lives. As they write, “ The hardest step is the first step out the door, and the best step is the last one”. They address these challenges in a straightforward and convincing way, step by step.

walking yoga is written in an unhurried friendly style and is well illustrated with photographs of various yoga poses. “We have found that the best approach to a sustained walking yoga practice is to approach your walks from a place of loving yourself and your body by gently coaxing and inspiring yourself to better health and vitality”. Their simple yet disciplined approach is within reach of even the most exercise phobic as well as an experienced yoga devotee.

Excerpts from walking yoga
by Ila Sarley and Garrett Sarley

The inspiration for a dynamic practice that is good for the body and the spirit is not new. Just look at religious and spiritual movements such as Sufis whirling and Christian mystics walking the labyrinth . . . Walking, however, has been the preferred form of meditation practiced by some of the greatest thinkers of modern times. Søren Kierkegaard, Charles Darwin, and Friedrich Nietzsche all considered walking an essential part of their health and genius. Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson used walking as a form of meditation and were some of the first Westerners to integrate yoga philosophy into their walking practice.

Even today, those devoted to a spiritual life use walking in their practice; Buddhists include walking meditation in their contemplative life; Jesuits build ambulatories for walking prayer; Hindu monks walk on their spiritual pilgrimage to holy sites; and Australian aborigines take “walkabouts,” primarily to find themselves in relation to the world of nature and spirit. Walking seems to lend itself to freeing the mind, opening the heart, and connecting us to a higher spirit. . . .

Recently we were in New York City, on Fifth Avenue just south of Central Park. We had finished meeting with a speaking coach to help us prepare our talk for a large group of yoga practitioners at a conference, and now we were hungry and looking for a place to eat. It was around two in the afternoon, and the streets were filled with people. Everyone was hurrying to a destination and seemed preoccupied with inner thoughts. You know the scene—it’s where the expression “rat race” comes from. Many of the faces we saw looked tense, irritated, or defeated, whole bodies armored against connection or contact with anyone or anything. You’ve experienced this type of walking. Even though your body is moving, you are miles away, thinking, planning, worrying, wrestling with some problem or another, just present enough to get where you are going in one piece.

Walking can be so much more, no matter where you are or what you need to do. Walking is a doorway to being in your body instead of your head, experiencing instead of thinking. When you walk with awareness, you can regroup and return to your center, clear your thoughts and feelings, and align your inner and outer worlds. It’s a time when you can be a natural animal as well as a socialized member of society—when you can be on the earth feeling both your primal and your eternal nature. Most important, walking can be a time to regain your perspective and to experience yourself as healthy, integrated, and alive.

How do you develop the capacity for this experience? The key is to approach walking as a full experience, not just a means of getting from one place to another. In yoga it is said that true yoga is “being there.” In other words, when we are fully present, no matter what we are doing, we are doing a form of yoga.

Yogis say that none of us can really be present unless we are fully in our bodies. Your body is the one things that is always firmly located in time and space—here and now. “Being here now” starts with coming home to your body. Awareness of your body is like an anchor that keeps the ship from drifting away from its place of safe harbor.

As humans, we are naturally conditioned to notice things that move and change. This is one of the reasons television is so popular and entertaining. There’s always some new program or set of images coming on. We wouldn’t have much interest in television if it showed the same image all the time. This natural conditioning probably developed as an aid to survival. Our ancestors living on the African savanna were more likely to survive when they were closely observant of the changes around them. So when we walk, it’s easiest to stay present if we pay attention to things that are always changing. And the place to start is the breath.